Into the Dark (Dark Universe Book 1)

by Jason Halstead

  “Aden, don’t get more people killed,” Amber warned.

  Seph sniffed and said, “Altruism is one thing, stupidity is another. Besides, I’d say he has a fifty-fifty chance the meds in his suit knocked him out.”

  “Meds?” Aden asked.

  “Get hurt bad enough and the suit will knock you out. Controls shock, lowers your heartbeat and temperature. Sort of like the stasis Seph went into,” Amber said.

  Aden tried to check the arm-mounted panel on Garf’s suit but it was shot up. He accessed the service jacks on his suit and pulled out the cord so he could interface with Garf’s suit directly. The two damaged suits communicated their security handshake before data began to stream into Aden’s display.

  He grunted and let his cable retract into his suit before rising to his feet. The bullet wedged in his calf was a painful reminder of what he’d been through, but it was the only reminder he still noticed.

  “You done yet?” Meshelle snapped.

  “Yeah,” Aden said. “Let’s go. Garf’s down, but not out. Amber’s right. I don’t want to guess how much work he’s gonna need to patch him up, though.”

  “Don’t you forget it,” Amber crowed.

  Seph snorted and fired off another shot at a Criknid straggler that was heading towards them. Her high-density round destroyed his head from over two hundred meters and dropped him like a stone.

  “Hurry,” Meshelle ordered and turned towards the bowl in the middle of the floating island. “Let’s finish this.”

  Chapter 33

  Meshelle pointed at the handful of Criknids moving towards them from the Kesari shuttle. “Seph, keep them off us.”

  The Tassarian surveyed the field and grabbed one of the fallen Criknid men. She dragged him to where two others were lying next to each other and made an impromptu barricade. She dropped to a knee and rested her rifle on her new lightly armored barricade. Amid panting from her efforts, she said, “Send my love to the squid.”

  “Are you good?” Aden asked.

  Seph risked a glance back at him. “Don’t worry, there’s no path out of this where I die before you do.”

  “I’d say she’s doing just fine,” Amber observed as Seph took her first shot.

  “Come on,” Meshelle growled. “Aden, cover left; Amber right.”

  Aden checked his pistol and moved to his new position. He took a deep breath and coughed out the residual fluid in his chest and throat. Breathing was easier, somehow. Other than a little stiffness, he could barely tell he’d been shot in the chest.

  “Moving,” Meshelle announced.

  They pushed ahead and made it to the edge of the concentric steps that dropped down into the bowl carved into the ground. It was nearly a hundred feet across and, given the eighteen oversized steps, dropped twenty feet before it leveled off in the middle to thirty feet of nothing save a pedestal with some crystal spurs sticking up from it and four figures.

  “She’s the same as the statue,” Amber hissed.

  A ten-foot tall green-skinned woman towered in front of the pedestal. Her wings were folded behind her back, but instead of fur or feathers, more green skin stretched across them. A circlet with sparkling crystals rested atop long flowing hair as black as the deepest reaches of space. The crown matched the pendant that rested on her chest between the swell of her breasts.

  Aden forced his eyes down her smooth torso to the shimmering white skirt she wore on her hips. She held a staff in one hand, gripped by a hand with three fingers, one of them opposing the other two. Her feet were bare and possessed the same number of digits: two long toes with talons on the front and a third where the heel would have been.

  “All this trouble, only to fail at the end.”

  The sound of Fluvulis’s voice pulled their attention from the alien being behind him. He stood in his multi-limbed suit with two Criknids standing beside him, guns trained on the three mercenaries. The four-armed men wore heavier armor than the Criknids they’d faced already.

  “That must really suck for you,” Meshelle said.

  The Kesari’s tiny mouth twisted up in a snarl. “Not me, you fool. You! You’ve cost me a lot of time and money. That crystal is not for you to have. It is a relic of a forgotten race. A race defeated by time and the natural order of the universe. Hand it over and I’ll let you live.”

  “We’ve killed how many of your hired guards? Do you really think two more will stop us?”

  “Not hired guards,” Fluvulis said. “Dedicated warriors. The Criknid are the victors here. The survivors of an empire that once dominated this universe.”

  “This universe?” Aden asked.

  Meshelle glared at him to silence him and turned back. “How about you tell us why it’s so important, then we’ll decide.”

  “Boss, he’s going to kill us if you hand it over,” Amber growled.

  “I should,” he admitted. “But you’ve proved so resourceful, I think I’d rather have you working for me instead. Otherwise I might have to do whatever is necessary to keep you silent.”

  “What’s up with her?” Meshelle asked and gestured with her rifle at the green-skinned alien behind the Kesari.

  “A forgotten memory of a forgotten people.”

  “I am the Oracle of Ampythea,” the winged woman said.

  Fluvulis cringed inside his suit. “Enough! She is a phantasm. An illusion of a time that is no longer relevant. Give me the crystal so this foolishness can end. Our universe will continue to unfold as we intend it to.”

  “Why did the crystal bring us here?” Aden asked. “What is this place?”

  “This place is nothing!” Fluvulis hissed.

  “You are on Calarsys, home world of the Forge of Creation,” the green-skinned woman said. She turned and gestured at the pedestal. “This is where the Forge has been locked away for eons.”

  “Forge?” Aden asked.

  “Enough!” Fluvulis shouted. “Hand it over! Now. Or die.”

  Meshelle reached her hand back to the hardened pack on her back. “The price tripled,” she said.

  “Tripled?” he hissed. “After all you’ve cost me already?”

  “I was going for quadruple,” Meshelle said.

  “Fine. Give it to me. I’ll pay for it after we get off this rock,” he agreed.

  Aden brought up his communications manager and opened up the secure channel to Meshelle and Amber. “That was too easy,” he warned.

  “I know,” Meshelle snapped. “Get ready.”

  “For what?” Amber asked, stealing the question out of Aden’s mouth.

  Meshelle pulled a bag out of her pack. The bulge in the fabric had to be the crystal. Aden shook his head, wondering why she would give it to Fluvulis. The Kesari’s access port slid open and two tentacles stretched out of it, reaching towards her. Meshelle tossed it through the air.

  Fluvulis’s tentacle wrapped around the bag and drew it close. With the suit open, his excited gasp drifted out of it. His second tentacle yanked the tie open at the top and reached inside. He drew it out and held it up, his smile fading and his eyes widening as he recognized the grenade in his serpentine grip.

  “Cover!” Meshelle shouted while throwing herself back.

  Aden lunged to his left and Amber to her right. Fluvulis snapped his tentacles back inside his suit. The grenade dropped to the ground and bounced once before it exploded and sent Fluvulis tumbling backwards. The Criknids to either side staggered and went down, stunned by the raw concussive force of the explosion.

  “Take them out!” Meshelle shouted through the sudden chaos.

  Aden was already rolling and bringing his pistol up. He shook the double vision out of his eyes and squinted, focusing through the cracks in his helmet. The Criknid closest to him rose up and brought his weapon to bear. It was a big gun too, with a barrel opening nearly twice the size of the Betari he’d used earlier.

  Aden fired, catching the Criknid high on the right side of his chest. The insectoid warrior twisted as the plasma crackled
and chewed away at the armor. Aden fired a second shot as his opponent twisted back, hitting him a couple inches to the right and causing the glow of superheated ferro-ceramic material to spread.

  The Criknid’s rifle spat out the first large caliber round. It passed to Aden’s left, as did the second that cycled a quarter second later. The third fifteen-millimeter slug punched a hole through the armor high on the left side of Aden’s chest and shattered his clavicle at the same time Aden’s third cartridge fired and blasted a hole through the weakened armor over the Criknid’s chest.

  Aden jerked back to the left. His arm went numb and dropped at his side. The Criknid struggled and tried to flip himself over, but the damage to his organs was too great. He twitched a few more times and then lay still.

  Aden turned to see Fluvulis popping open his suit and crawling out of it. The oversized alien woman behind him remained in place, passive and observant. The Criknid on the far side was hurting, both arms on his right side hanging, but the gun held in his left cycled through four rounds each second towards Amber and Meshelle.

  Aden took aim and fired two more shots. The first two struck his right shoulder and neck, splashing the liquid energy across the armor and superheating it. He started to turn when Aden’s third cartridge hit him in the side of the head and sent the Criknid staggering. Combined fire from Amber and Meshelle forced the Criknid back. The glowing armor on the side of his face darkened as bullets struck it and chewed through the impact-resistant material. Yellow and brown fluid splattered across the armor, cooling it. The final Criknid guard dropped and lay still, squashed like a beetle beneath a stomping foot.

  “You fools!” Fluvulis hissed. He’d retreated behind the woman and the pedestal. “You can’t control this! You have no idea what kind of power this is! Your races are too young, too juvenile. Too stupid!”

  “Why don’t you tell us?” Meshelle asked as she picked herself up. Her armor was twisted and torn from where the heavy assault rifle had glanced off her. Amber looked worse, with one leg dripping blood at a steady rate from where the armor had been mangled by a bullet. Aden circled around the pedestal until Fluvulis couldn’t hide from him and where Amber and Meshelle were positioned.

  “Your primitive species can’t grasp such concepts!” he snorted.

  Aden fired his pistol, sending a plasma pulse into the unarmored Kesari and making him shriek in agony as three tentacles were blown off and his side was charred and split open. Aden stepped up closer and took aim with his final round. He fired his final round just below Fluvulis’s mouth, where the Kesari’s brain was located.

  “Aden!” Meshelle hissed.

  “Oops,” Aden said. “Guess my primitive nature got the best of me.”

  Chapter 34

  “Amber!” Aden growled. He lurched across the ground and stopped when he realized he was standing next to the Oracle of Ampythea. He twisted and kept walking, stepping sideways so he kept on eye on the half-naked giantess. His chest burned where he’d been shot. In fact, the wound felt like it was getting hotter.

  “I’m okay,” she said. “Meds kicked in—blood vessels dilated so the bleeding’s stopped.”

  “Yeah, as long as you don’t move and we get you stitched up before the meds wear off,” Meshelle said. “So stay on your ass. You don’t have my permission to bleed out.”

  Aden kept edging around the circle until he was next to them. “Deadeye, you okay?”

  “Don’t call me that,” Meshelle snapped.

  “Oh…sorry,” he said. “How are you?”

  “Not the first time I’ve been shot,” she said. “I’ll live. You?”

  Aden opened his mouth to respond and then cried out as the heat intensified in his shoulder and he felt something crunch. He staggered a step and reached up with his right arm. By the time his hand got there, the pain started to fade and so did the heat.

  “Aden?”

  “Sorry, I…I don’t know. I’m okay, I think. Shot up, but I don’t feel too bad.”

  “Meds,” Amber said in a breathy voice. “Be careful; you can overextend yourself.”

  “Yeah, take it easy,” Meshelle agreed. She turned to look at the towering woman in front of the pedestal. “Now what’s your story?”

  “I have no story,” the oracle said. “I am the Oracle of Ampythea. My purpose is to tell the story of others.”

  “That’s not confusing,” Meshelle muttered.

  “The concussion grenade Meshelle threw didn’t faze you—how?” Aden asked.

  The Oracle turned her attention to him. “I am the—”

  “The Oracle, yes, we know,” Meshelle said. “But you look real to me, and I know that grenade was real.”

  “The rules of this universe do not apply to me,” she said.

  “Rules like modesty,” Amber offered.

  Aden blushed and jerked his eyes away from her naked chest. Everything was proportionate to her height but gravity seemed to be one example of rules that didn’t apply to her. “More than that,” he said. “First Fluvulis and now you keep specifying ‘this’ universe. Um, isn’t this the only universe, or are you talking about galaxies?”

  “There are an infinite number of universes,” the oracle said. She focused on him. “I recognize the Vagnosian. What species are you?”

  “What—what? I don’t understand. I’m human. Or a Terran, if you prefer.”

  “Me too,” Amber said and offered a lazy wave of her hand from where she sat.

  The oracle looked at Amber. “Similar, but different. He is a superior organism.”

  A laugh slipped out of Aden’s mouth before he could stop himself. “What do you mean?”

  “Your form is structured in a designed and consistent manner. It is optimal, given the restraints of the Terran form you both possess.”

  “Designed and consistent?” Meshelle asked. “What does that mean?”

  “He is not a naturally occurring organism. This being has been constructed.”

  Meshelle turned to look at him. She slung her rifle onto her back and asked, “Something you need to tell me?”

  “I don’t—what would I tell you? I mean, I’m human. My parents were in the Terran Navy. I had private tutoring and then military schooling. Then the academy. No siblings, just me and my parents.”

  The oracle continued, “Your body is crawling with beneficial symbiotic constructs that are reconstructing your injured organic structures.”

  “What the hell does that mean?” Amber asked.

  “Healing!” Aden gasped.

  “Healing?”

  “I was shot—”

  “We all were,” Meshelle snapped.

  “Yeah, well, I had a pierced lung at one point. Broken clavicle just now. Both feel better. My leg has been hit a couple times, too, but it feels better. Works better, even, not just the meds.”

  “Repaired structures,” the oracle said.

  “Holy shit,” Aden breathed. “Symbiotic constructs?”

  “What are you?” Meshelle glared at him.

  “I’m—I’m just a normal human being.”

  The oracle felt differently. “If your structure is not standard and the female version is, you are most assuredly not normal by your species’ parameters.”

  “Param—what the hell?” Aden asked as his head spun. “I have some people I need to talk to.”

  “We’ll worry about that later,” Meshelle growled. She turned back to the oracle and reached behind her to pull out the crystal. It wasn’t in a sack. “What can you tell us about this?”

  The oracle paused as she stared at the crystal. Her lips flicked up into a smile. “You are in possession of one of the lost keys of Ampythea. It is one of one hundred distributed throughout your universe.”

  “Where are the others?” Aden asked.

  “Eighty-seven have been located and are being utilized to transfer Aspartillian energies from the Forge,” she recounted. “The energy is being used for the construction of multiple items and effects. Th
e majority are used for transportation purposes.”

  “Transportation purposes? What in the null space are you talking about?” Meshelle demanded.

  “Null space?” the oracle asked. “What is this null space?”

  Meshelle waved the question off. “Deep space, between galaxies. It’s an expression that means what are you talking about?”

  “The black boxes!” Aden hissed. “Superluminal travel—transport.”

  The oracle looked at him and nodded. “That is correct, Terran.”

  “Son of a bitch,” Meshelle breathed. “That’s why he wanted it, to maintain their monopoly!”

  “What else can it be used for?”

  “With the key, the Forge can be unlocked and full Aspartillian energy returned to this universe. The banishment of the Ampytheans will be ended, but all of those who were caught by the terms of their surrender have passed on.”

  Meshelle blinked a few times and turned to glance at Aden. She turned back to the oracle and asked, “Or if I keep this, I can make black boxes like the Kesari do?”

  “Correct.”

  “And be hunted by the Kesari,” Aden reminded her. “Just like that Devikian thug warned.”

  Meshelle scowled at him. “This unlocking thing, what’s that mean? Asp-a-what energy?”

  “It is a type of energy missing in this universe in significant quantities. It will enrich and empower both organic and inorganic matter in this universe. Potential will be realized and the unawakened will be awakened,” she explained.

  “You’ve managed to confuse me more,” Meshelle argued.

  The oracle focused on Meshelle for several moments before speaking anew. “The Vagnosian race has myths and legends of shantarassi. They once knew how to harness and use Aspartillian energy.”

  Meshelle’s gasp could be heard without the need of the comms.

  The oracle turned to look at Aden and Amber. “The Terran species referred to this energy as magic. It was utilized by individuals that called themselves—”

  “Impossible!” Aden blurted, interrupting her. “Those are myths and legends. Debunked and proved to be false!”

  “Without Aspartillian energy to maintain the effects, they are not lasting,” the oracle said.